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It is August. Or rather the last day of July to the first day of September, a k a Forgotten Summer Vacation Homework time.

How do we know? Because distinguished anime artists show us an Establishing Shot with this green, noisy, bug-eyed bug striding a tree with the student yawning in a distant window. Although sometimes we see an extreme closeup of the goggle-eyed critter in an Aspect Montage — whereupon it normally falls off the tree to show that even it has fainted from the heat.

There is more of a knowledge gap than a cultural gap between Asian and western countries. Even though they are quite common in much of the Americas, most North Americans mistake the sound of the common summer cicada for crickets, even though their calls sound nothing like each other. It's when periodic cicadas emerge that cicadas make the news, despite them being a completely different species (Magicicada). That species has synchronized its life cycle into several 13 or 17 year broods. Unlike the yearly emergence of late summer or Dog Day cicadas, magicicadas broods emerge in vast numbers in the spring along North America's east-coast. They only live for about two weeks, during which they are present envery greatmasse. Thus, children in some areas may never hear of cicadas unless a periodic cicada brood emerges in their area. There are even a few places where multiple broods overlap. May God have mercy on the souls of the people living there.

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Examples

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Anime and Manga

Seen in a flashback in Karin, where the cicada was used as a visual aid for bloodsucking. In case that wasn't already pretty obvious from the blood...

In Potemayo, Guchuko shows her usual patience by putting up with this racket for about 2 seconds before she uses hypersonics to stun the cicadas ... and shatter glass, set off car alarms, cause dogs to freak out, etc etc. You don't mess with Guchuko.

Manga example: Yotsuba&! - Lampshade hung in the first chapter, at the start of summer vacation when Yotsuba climbs a telephone pole and pretends to be a cicada. Shows up again with her obsession with tsukutsukuboushi bringing the end of summer.

Higurashi: When They Cry (literally translated as "When the Cicadas Cry") has, appropriately enough, this trope in just about every episode. Although it's worth noting that the anime takes place in June, not the time frame given, and that a Higurashi is a particular type of cicada that comes out in early summer. More noticeable in the anime (because they're so persistent) is the distinct difference in chirping between day and night. The evening through night is when the higurashi cry.

Neon Genesis Evangelion uses this trope constantly to show that it's summer all year round in Japan, due to Second Impact shifting Earth's axis so much that traditional seasons no longer exist. Unlike most examples of this trope, which simply use cicada calls to signify that it's summer, Evangelion typically juxtaposes them with major dramatic events (i.e. an Angel attack).

Many of Ranma ½'s summer episodes use these as episode openers; most notable of all, an Image Song for one of the characters pulls a slow pan up a tree for no other reason than to portray the cicada on its side.

The Endless Eight episode of Haruhi Suzumiya features this. Haruhi insists that catching cicadas is part of a perfect summer. She also insists on releasing them, after. Kyon says that releasing them feels like opening Pandora's Box. The interesting theme here is that in Eastern mythology, cicadas represent reincarnation and the soul leaving the body to start over again, which perfectly describes the Endless Eight.

Lucky Star uses this trope a few times, a cicada seemingly dying, breaking its hypnotic trance on a sleeping Konata and starting the next scene. The aftermath of its death is the center of another scene opening, featuring other smaller bugs breaking the dead cicada into pieces to take to their nest.

The really fast opening shots in episode of Code Geass that shows Suzaku and Lelouch as children during the war contains a brief flash of one. In the DVD Commentary, one of the creators of the show talks about how an artist went all to all the trouble of going out and photographing a dead cicada to make sure to draw it correctly. It was disappointing when it was reduced to a two second frame.

Averted in Gosick, when Japanese exchange student Kazuya points out that one major difference between the summer in the European Fictional Country of Sauville and Japan is the distinct lack of cicadas.

Comes up frequently in The Tatami Galaxy. It adds to the show's laid-back, casual setting.

Parodied in Rurouni Kenshin. Kenshin and Sanosuke were tailing Yahiko in one episode, checking up on some form of suspicious activity they thought he was doing. Yahiko catches on, and when he turns around to look, Sanosuke and Kenshin duck behind a rooftop and start imitating cicada sounds to try and convince Yahiko that there's nothing out of the ordinary going on. Yahiko calls them out on it by saying it's the wrong season for cicadas.

Parodied in the anime of Namiuchigiwa No Muromisan with a blatantly fake voiceover of "buzz-buzz" noises instead of the usual cicada stock recordings.

Dandelion Wine: In one chapter, Tom Spaulding is listening to the cicadas outside. He believes that the number of times a cicada buzzes in fifteen seconds plus thirty-nine equals the temperature in degrees Fahrenheit. Doug thinks this is a waste of time and tells him that he could just look at a thermometer. This annoys Tom and causes him to argue with his brother.

Video Games

Animal Crossing: Various species of cicada appear in the summer months, residing on trees. True to their real-life counterparts, they're disgustingly common and obnoxiously loud. You can, of course, catch the cicadas and sell them (the high commonality of cicadas makes them one of the least skittish tree bugs at that time of the year), or put them in your house so your character can have this trope year round.

One of the "Thousand Years of Dreams" flashback segments in Lost Odyssey features immortal protagonist Kaim hired to protect a village from soldiers so that the local cicada brood will survive to sing many years later.

You can hear cicadas outside in the summer months in Persona 4, especially late at night (since your window is open, it seems).

Nincada and its evolutions Ninjask and Shedinja from Pokémon are based on cicadas; Ninjask are said to be loud enough to induce headaches.

During the training level in the second Tenchu game, the only thing that passes for soundtrack in this place is the droning of the cicadas.

In Splatoon, cicadas calls can be heard in the background of the Flounder Heights stage. During Splatfests, which take place at night, crickets replace them.

Visual Novels

In Tsukihime, the cicadas chirping is the most vivid thing Shiki remembers of the day he was killed, brought back to life, and brainwashed to forget it. He even compares his own dead body to a discarded cicada shell.

Eat Your Kimchi (filmed in South Korea) has a video about how annoying cicadas are, though the sound effect is written as HEEEEEGH. They use actual cicada sounds, which are really annoying.

Bee and Puppycat has a joke about cicadas in the first episode, with Puppycat grabbing one off a tree and yelling at it to shut up.

Cicada:who wants to make a million babies with me who wants to make a million babies with me who wants to make a million babies with me...

Real Life

This occasionally crops up in Australian media, as Cicadas are very widespread, and are almost constant during the early evenings. Like everywhere else, they appear in the hot summer (and late spring) months. However, being the Southern hemisphere, they're most common in November, December, January and February.

This is very often used in French shows to tip the viewer the action takes place in Provence (Southern France), as cicadas are very present there every summer, but unheard of in the northern half of the country. Some shows tend to overdo this, letting the viewer hear cicadas during winter just to point out it happens in the south.

On the East Coast of the United States, a few cicada species do show up yearly, so they can be heard, but they tend to stay away from developed areas. They don't come in the same plague-like droves that the 13 or 17 year cicadas do. They're not as loud so people don't hear them. Now when the 13 or 17 year cicadas show up, you will hear them. If a tree is full of them, they can be as loud as jackhammers, sometimes louder. Pray for the people who own said tree, because they have to deal with it 24/7. You only have to drive by it. The last Invasion of the Cicadasnote Yes, it must be capitalized. It's an event. There's a reason they're also known as locusts. The Pilgrims in 1620 arrived a couple years after that region's brood had emerged, and so for the first decade or so, spring was normal, until one year, catching them completely by surprise, millions of these THINGS emerge from the ground and make this hideous noise, they thought it was a biblical plague of locusts, and that name stuck even though they're completely unrelated to actual locusts. on the East Coast was in 2004. The Bible Belt and Rust Belt got their own Invasion of the Cicadas courtesy of 13 year Brood XIX in 2011.

"My god, they really do sound like car alarms!"

Which year the Invasion takes place is largely dependent upon where one lives. Broods synchronize in certain areas to guarantee enough cicadas are around for their population to be utterly decimated by predators and still not kill enough to destroy the whole brood.

The yearly cicada species living in the Chicago region, however, are always obnoxiously loud. Always.

You do not know suffering until you are living in Virginia during the overlap of multiple cycles.

The 2011 cycle in the South was annoying as hell but ultimately ignorable. Thank god for headphones.

Cicadas exist all over the United States. The Apache Cicada of the southwest is a yearly event for most of the summer, and they sound like a long, constant LOUD (One of the loudest insects on the planet) buzz. It's a bit like having tinnitus, only less musical.

However, there's a small town about an hour outside of Chicago that, while it does get yearly cicadas, doesn't get the awful droves of 17 year cicadas, as development of the town started during one of the years the cicadas were supposed to be out, effectively removing them from the area. There are a few more cicadas than usual that year, but not the plague that other places get.

They are especially prevalent in the southern East Coast states, namely Florida and Georgia, where the constant chatter of cicadas is commonly associated with images of sweltering, humid summer days.

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